“My friend,” he said gently, “mark how the gringo gives his little dark brother a lesson in deportment. Behold, if I have given thee a souvenir of our meeting, I also have taken one. By this pinched and throbbing nose shall I be remembered when I am gone; by these hairs from thy rat's moustache shall I remember thee. Go, and thrust not that nose into a gringo's business again. It is unsafe.”
He released Pucker-eye, nodded brightly to the purser's clerk and quartermaster, who, spellbound and approving, had watched him mete out retribution according to his code, and went aboard, just as an assistant steward came hurrying along the deck beating a lusty solo on a triangle—the signal for all non-passengers to go ashore.
Webster made his way through the crowd to his room, looked in, saw that his baggage was there, and walked around on the starboard side to join in the general farewell of all on board to the crowd on the levee.
At the shore end of the gangplank Pucker-eye and Pop-eye still waited. The unfortunate Pucker-eye was weeping with pain and futile rage and humiliation, but Webster noticed that Pop-eye's attention was not on his friend but upon each passenger that boarded the ship, of which there were the usual number of late arrivals. As each passenger approached, Pop-eye scanned him with more than casual interest.
Webster smiled. “Looking for that valet they heard me talking about,” he reflected. “Pop-eye, you're a fine, capable lad. I thought you had the brains of the two. You're not going away until you've had a chance to size up the reinforcements at my command, are you?”
Promptly at one o'clock the captain mounted the bridge and ordered the gangplank drawn ashore. The breastline was cast off; with a long-drawn bellow from her siren the wheel of La Estrellita commenced to churn the muddy water and her bow swung gently outboard, while the stern line acted as a spring. With the stern line slackened and cast overboard the vessel pushed slowly out into the stream where the current caught her and swung her in a wide arc. Webster watched Pucker-eye and Pop-eye leave the landing arm in arm. Pop-eye was sporty enough to wave at him, and Webster, not to be outdone in kind, waved back.
He lighted a cigar and leaned over the rail as the steamer, gathering speed, swept down river.
“Good-bye, you golden fizz and chicken gumbo,” he called, as the city receded and the low, wooded shores below the city came into view. He had forgotten Pucker-eye and Pop-eye in the flood of poignant regret that swept over him at the memory of the peerless Antoine!